Wednesday, July 13, 2016

Survival Skills Training

This week our Leaders' Group visited Sewell Park to learn how to build shelters out of natural materials. The survival skills class is every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon through the end of July.

A Message from Jason Baker, our survival skills instructor: Humans today are insulated from the natural world. Our interactions are as a tourist. Even when we camp, we insulate ourselves behind tent walls, sleeping pads, and bags. When we hike, we speed from destination to destination, often missing the rich environment we pass through. What most of us have failed to discover is the rich belonging and connection to all things that can be gained through the immersion in our natural world. Our Survival Skills Class with Jason Baker teaches:

The Sacred Order of Survival - Shelter, Fire, Water, Food

How to build an effective shelter quickly that will keep a person dry and warm even in extreme winter weather

How to make fire from friction

How to find clean water and purify it for human consumption.

How to forage and find food in Nature

In the process of learning these basic wilderness survival techniques many other areas will be learned and taught such as:

Track location and identification

Plant and animal identification

Habitat exploration and understanding the web of life

How heat moves and natural things with insulating properties

Awareness of what is around us in the woods as well as awareness of how we affect the wilderness and each other

The Jason Baker survival skills class is an amazing one. I am planning to teach my whole family the basics of wilderness survival, and I think this post will come in handy. Some of the skills I want my family to learn before our next outdoor adventure are: track location & identification; plant & animal identification; and individual & team work. Here is another survival training post that has really been helpful: http://survival-mastery.com/basics/survival-training.html